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I am going to create a forum for my clan from a game and I was looking for a way to point/redirect to an ugly/long domain name from a shorter domain name.

I am looking for a provider similar to http://www.freedomain.co.nr/ but I am looking for more options and different domain extensions to decide which one would be easiest to use.

So it would be something like www.niceclanname.domainext -> www.unglyhardnametouseandremember.com/clan/

What are the available services that do this?

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Should it really be a domain name or would an url shortener like e.g. goo.gl work as well? – Raffael Luthiger Dec 16 '11 at 19:20
I would like to give preferences to domain names that can be managed such as dot.tk and the one I mentioned above as with those I don't really need to redirect the name for instance dot.tk allows me to use my own dns from my hosting company. – Prix Dec 16 '11 at 19:31
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@Prix if you are not going to redirect then what are you going to do? Your question is clearly about redirecting from a short domain name to longer domain name that users will have an issue with remembering. So is that what you are looking for or are you looking for a domain provider that will allow you to host the site on your own hardware? – RandomBen Dec 16 '11 at 20:01
Not really understanding this question - if you have a long/ugly domain name because it was free to get, then buying a domain name and redirecting is kinda pointless, you may as well just get some hosting on the domain name you actually want? – Codecraft Dec 17 '11 at 1:36
Is your forum on your own hosting plan or are you using one of this services that provide a forum for free? – Osvaldo Dec 17 '11 at 10:22
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closed as not constructive by danlefree♦ Sep 6 '12 at 1:01

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1 Answer

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If the question really is just about redirecting from one domain to a site on another, I have some solutions:

Frame forwarding

Where you set up a frameset on a page that basically takes up 100% of the page and loads the content from another site into it.

So you type: www.site1.com and it has a simple HTML frame page, which then loads in www.sitwithlongurl.com/evenlongerbit

Advantage - no server access needed other than FTP and the ability to upload a simple page. Users will see your short URL in their browser bar. Disadvantage - your short URL won't get indexed as the full site, it will just be indexed as one single page of frames; not really ideal (i'd hide it from the index anyway as it will be duplicate content).

HTTP Redirect

Where you set up a page on your domain that simply redirects, ie using PHP:

<?php
header("location: http://www.sitwithlongurl.com/evenlongerbit");
die;
?>

Advantage - its pretty clean, its transparent. Teleports users directly to the long URL and makes no secret of what its doing. Disadvantage - You'll need PHP on the hosting server. Fairly common tho.

DNS

If you have control of DNS records, you can manipulate them and forward to another site at that level.

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